Nothing But Memories on Dark Horizons
by Red-Ink-Cliche
Summary: After rejoining with his somebody, what is left of Roxas's mind begins to wonder about a certain nobody, whose name be can't seem to recall, but knows "it begins with an 'A.'"  Oneshot.  R&R please!


What was his name again? I barely knew. It began with an "A," I remember that much. Memory. That's another thing I seem to be pondering a lot lately, besides the name of that being I once think I knew. He might have been a man too. And his name began with an "A."

_.:I put my trust in you:._

"Careful!" he shouted, grabbing the boy's arm to stabilize him as they both teetered on the edge of the clock tower, the concrete ground some number or stories below them.

Roxas gave a muffled yelp as he was jerked back away from the edge and into the man's lanky arms.

"Idiot," the man chastised through a light chuckle at the bug-eyed look on Roxas's round little face.

"That's not funny!" he shouted, weaseling out of the man's calm gasp, his fear of falling quickly receding with the new presence of a sheepish shame. "I was just fine!"

Emerald eyes flickered in the setting sun, a lopsided smile beneath them in a sort of knowing, snide fashion like the look of a sly cat-or rather, a cunning panther. Almost dangerous.

"You were leaning too far and would have fallen, so I pulled you back," those thin lips replied, voice like thick, sweet honey, and Roxas was drowning in it, like a drunk little bumblebee.

The boy gave his head a shake to clear his fuzzing mind.

"That's not the point!" he shouted.

"Then what is the point, if we're both still here and alive and okay?"

"Th-The point-!" but Roxas had run out of words. Those emerald eyes he kept staring into were like beautiful snares, and he knew we was slowly being drawn into them, he himself nothing but a blundering rabbit compared to the emerald-eyed panther before him. And he knew what panthers did to rabbits.

But that sweet honey was just too tempting. He wanted to be caught in that panther's jowls, but he knew he would always be too proud to admit it.

"Roxas."

The sound of his name pulled him from his thoughts. "What now?" he tried to make his voice sound irate, at least mildly irritated, but he also knew he was never good at faking anything. Especially emotions.

He expected some sort of crude joke or comment on his fumbled attempt to lie to them both, but the voice that came was far more serious.

"Roxas," it repeated, as if just to taste the boy's name on his lips once more, greedily lapping at his own seductive trap, "Do you trust me?"

The question struck Roxas as odd. Of course he trusted him. The number of missions they had survived together should have proven that. Why would he need any more affirmation?

"R-Roxas...?" the voice tested once more, almost afraid.

"Of course I trust you," he replied, briskly turning away from the man, crossing his arms as he steeled his voice. "Idiot."

Before he knew it, the man had swept him up in those lanky arms of his once more, spinning them both around and around.

_.:We've never been perfect:._

The division between them was growing, tearing them both apart like ships in a maelstrom, and with no light or land in sight.

What had caused the minor snag that quickly turned into a gaping chasm neither of them could seem to remember, or at least make it known that he did. And as far as Roxas was concerned, it didn't really matter anyhow.

They were falling away from each other, and that was all that mattered.

Falling like paper cranes from skyscrapers, inanimate wings helpless in the wafting breeze, being carried somewhere they didn't know nor even care to know.

The emerald-eyed man had called it a crash and burn-what was happening to them. Roxas had called it a difference in opinion. The man said they should try to work it out. Roxas said he was tired and had enough.

That night, he didn't sleep. He tossed and turned and tumbled and groaned, his mind restless and wondering, and always ending up on the subject of those emerald eyes.

He had left them looking so dim and brooding. The look defiantly didn't suit them. Nor did it suit that wild mane of fiery hair above them.

Absentmindedly, he began to wonder what running a hand through that mess of a hairstyle would feel like. Maybe it would upset the gangly man, or maybe make him laugh.

Roxas hoped it would be the latter, that is, should he ever get the chance to do so. He wasn't sure if he felt regret or not for whatever it was that had happened. But how could he feel bad about something he didn't remember? He just knew something had happened, and then they began to drift.

They made no attempt to drop any anchors or pull up any sails. Nor did they throw ropes to each other in hopes of staying connected. They just let each other pass by.

Roxas didn't know if that had been a good decision on their part or not. Then again, there was a lot he just didn't know, and for the most part didn't even want to know.

Then there was the knock on his door, and he rose to answer it. He pulled the door open slowly, and his own dull, blue eyes met with a pair of equally distraught emeralds.

"Roxas," those pale lips began, just barely audible.

"Hey."

The man averted his gaze, checking over his shoulders for any unwanted intruders, then slowly, with the utmost tenderness and grace, let his own hand brush against the back of the boy's for a blissful two seconds.

And Roxas knew they would drift back together again.

_.:You always keep your word:._

"Promise me you'll come back, okay?" he asked, voice timid, like a scrawny deer emerging into a dewy clearing, an open expanse of endless possible dangers on all sides.

The man gave him another crooked grin, white teeth flashing momentarily from between thin lips.

"You worried about me, Roxy?" he teased, reaching a large hand down to ruffle with boy's blond, whirlwind hair.

"I'm being serious!" Roxas shouted, quickly ducking out of the man's reach. And that was when something about his demeanor must have changed-for the man was suddenly looking at him with far more concern, eyes touching on worry.

"It's just a normal mission, Roxas," he replied smoothly, reaching out again, this time in a gentle, lullaby-manner.

The boy let the approaching hand grace the side of his arm before it came back up to hold tenderly onto his shoulder. The touch was warm, just like always.

Those hands were forever alight with a sort of resonating heat. And they felt nothing short of heavenly. Everyone else's hands were cold and callused, and gripped uncomfortable when they touched him. But this man's hands never gripped. He wasn't quite sure what to call what they did-perhaps "caress," or maybe "embrace." It didn't matter, he was never one for colorful diction anyway. The hands did what they did, and it always felt endlessly _good._

"Don't try to lie to me," he replied dully, head dropped low as he sidled just the slightest bit closer to that blazing warmth. "I heard what the mission was about."

"You should know better than to ease drop," the man chastised, emerald eyes less cunning, less dangerous. They looked less emerald as well, for that matter, more murky and clouded, though with what it was hard to tell.

"Please just promise me you'll be okay," Roxas said again, this time pleading.

"What good would a few words do?" the man asked, and he was subconsciously pulling the suddenly very small boy closer to him. Roxas was always small, but this time, right now in their own little puddle of sorrow and pity, he seemed even smaller.

"I'd at least hear your voice a little longer," he replied slowly, quietly. "Besides, I trust you. You'll have to keep your word if I'm going to keep trusting you."

"We don't know the future, Roxas," the man continued quietly. He was unusually sullen. Normally, those flaming hands were accompanied with an equally flaming attitude of overconfidence and cunning joy.

"Then just promise me something. Anything."

The man now had him fully enveloped in his arms, pulling the boy's chest against his own.

"How about I promise the last thing I think of will be you."

Roxas didn't know how to respond to that one. He would have preferred him to make another wild, unconventional joke or snide remark-he at least knew how to react to those. But this time the man had genuinely surprised him. It was like he was trying to put his affairs in order. And that scarred him.

"Don't promise that," Roxas began, voice cracking as he buried his face in the man's shoulder, as that was as high as he could seem to reach, his own legs beginning to crumble out from under him like pillars of ash and snow.

"Well it looks like I already did."

_.:I thought of you too:_.

I wasn't sure if that man had ever kept his word. After all, I never saw him again. How was I to know his last thoughts? The reasons for his last actions? His entire being was nothing but a far off memory to me, farther than the light in this strange empty darkness I now dwelled in.

Maybe he did keep his promise.

Nothing I could seem to recall pointed to otherwise, then again, I couldn't even remember the man's name. The man who had apparently meant so much to me, who I trusted with my life, who I forgave simply because he asked, and who kept his every word. That man was now the only thing I wanted to think of, and indeed he became just that. I imagined conversations with him over and over again. I imaged how his emerald eyes would widen in shock when I told him just how much he meant to me. I imagined how fire-warm his body would feel against mine as he scooped me up in some monstrous embrace.

And that was all I thought of ever again. Just that man and myself. No other thought, no other hope. Just him. I guess my last thoughts will be of him as well, if I'm even still thinking now.

And I think his name began with an "A."


End file.
